Charity Commission Wants Answers as Sentebale Sues Prince Harry in High Court Battle

The Charity Commission has a habit of arriving late to the party, wringing its hands and asking questions that should have been asked months ago. But on this occasion, the regulator has landed on something so obvious it is almost painful to have to spell it out.

How exactly does suing Prince Harry for defamation advance the purposes of a charity that exists to support orphaned and vulnerable children in southern Africa? That is the question Sophie Chandauka, Sentebale’s chairwoman, has so far declined to answer with any clarity.

Sentebale. co-founded by the Duke of Sussex in 2006 in memory of his mother, is now suing the very man who built it in a High Court battle. Sentebale, under the leadership of chairwoman Sophie Chandauka and its current board, has brought libel and slander claims against Harry and former trustee Mark Dyer. The charity says it is seeking the court’s “intervention, protection and restitution” following a “co-ordinated adverse media campaign” that it claims has caused “operational disruption and reputational harm”.

And the Charity Commission, which was notified of the intended action back in February, has finally piped up to say it is “seeking to understand how the legal action would further their charity’s purposes”. That is a warning shot, aimed as much at Chandauka’s leadership as at the lawsuit itself.

The governance collapse

Let us rewind, because this did not begin with a random legal filing. Trustees had already lost confidence in Sophie Chandauka’s leadership and asked her to step down. She refused. Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso then resigned in support of the departing trustees, and what began as an internal governance dispute soon spilled into a public and damaging power struggle.

The Charity Commission has already sharply criticised the way the dispute played out in public, saying it damaged Sentebale’s reputation and risked overshadowing its work.” The Commission criticized poor governance and the public handling of the dispute it found no bullying or misogynoir that Chanduaka was alleging. 

David Holdsworth, the commission’s chief executive, speaking last summer. And yet here we are, barely a year later, and the charity has escalated the conflict into the High Court. The question is no longer whether this is a governance failure. It is whether Chandauka is willing to acknowledge it.

The money question nobody wants to answer

“The charity is really going to have to answer the question: how is that going to be advancing the charity’s objects and purposes?” he said. “ It looks high stakes … It seems a sort of matter where there are going to be no winners.”

The TImes

Sentebale insists it is not using charitable funds for the lawsuit. Instead, it says it is relying on “external funds”. But here is where things get uncomfortable: the charity has refused to say who is financing the case. Whether those funders are current or former donors. Whether they are linked to chairwoman Sophie Chandauka or other trustees. And what protections exist if the case goes spectacularly wrong?

A source close to Prince Harry said it plainly: “Whether they’re using external or internal funds for the case, that money could still be used to support the charity’s work.”

He is not wrong. Sentebale reported income of £3.35 million in 2024. That is not a vast sum for an international charity with operational reach across southern Africa. Every pound, every hour, every ounce of leadership attention has a cost. And right now, that cost is being directed toward a defamation lawsuit against the charity’s founder.

Even if the money is coming from outside donors, Sophie made a choice. She decided that litigation, with all its unpredictability, reputational risk, and leadership drain, was a better use of resources than stabilising a charity that has been publicly tearing itself apart for over a year.

The contradiction at the heart of this case

Details of the drama at Sentebale were laid out in a book by investigative journalist Tom Bower, which was serialised in The Times. It included claims that Chandauka had told friends that a “horrible” and “defamatory” private dismissal letter about her was circulated to charity staff in an effort to “discredit and destroy” her. A spokesperson for the Duke of Sussex said they were not aware of any letter. Court records say the charity is being represented by Womble Bond Dickinson, which acted for the Post Office in the Horizon IT scandal.”

The TImes

And here is where the timeline becomes very difficult to ignore. Last month, investigative journalist Tom Bower, a man who once declared the monarchy depends on “obliterating” the Sussexes, published a book serialised in The Times which leaned heavily on Sophie Chandauka’s account of the Sentebale dispute. According to Bower, Chandauka told Prince Harry that a “brand audit” found donors and organisations did not want to be associated with his Netflix work, “and especially not with Meghan.” Sponsors had pulled away. Harry’s brand value, she reportedly argued, had crashed.

Now, just weeks later, that same chairwoman is suing Prince Harry for defamation, claiming that he and Mark Dyer caused “reputational harm” to Sentebale. The two accounts sit uneasily together. In Bower’s telling, Harry was already a liability whose presence hurt fundraising to the charity he co-founded. The lawsuit alleges that Harry’s conduct actively damaged the charity’s reputation. A chairwoman cannot reasonably argue, on the one hand, that a founder’s brand so diminished that donors flee, and on the other, that his alleged actions justify a lawsuit for reputational harm. Unless the goal is not consistency but narrative control.

And yet, scroll through Sentebale’s website today. The co-founders page still features Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso prominently, describing how “We co-founded Sentebale in 2006.” His image, his story, his mother’s memory, still powering the charity’s public appeal. Until, that is, it becomes convenient to sue him.

Bower, for his part, wrote that Chandauka reported the charity’s future without Harry “was secure.” If that were true, why is Sentebale in court claiming reputational harm from the very man it supposedly no longer needs? This is not a governance dispute anymore. It is a reputation war — and the children of Lesotho are nowhere in sight.

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The risk of mission drift

And this is what makes the whole spectacle so bleak. Sentebale exists to support vulnerable children and young people in southern Africa. Last year, Lesotho faced severe pressure from U.S. HIV aid cuts and Trump’s tariff assault on its garment industry, both of which hit vulnerable communities closely connected to the charity’s mission. So Sentebale’s work is morally serious and materially demanding. It requires focus from its current leadership, and a willingness to put beneficiaries above ego, above grievance, and above the intoxicating lure of a legal battle.

Instead, it is mired in litigation, opaque funding questions, and a leadership war that the Charity Commission itself is struggling to connect to any charitable purpose. That is what is really at stake here. Not just reputations at the top, but a mission that risks being overshadowed when the need on the ground remains urgent.